


Five Places the Doctor Never Took Liz Shaw

by eponymous_rose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Action/Adventure, Alternate Canon, Canon - TV, Character Study, Drama, Friendship, Gen, POV Third Person, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look what I've made of you. Look what I've done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Places the Doctor Never Took Liz Shaw

**1\. Mars (39th Century)**

There are the usual misunderstandings, of course. They're accused of murder and sentenced to death, and it's only when the Doctor saves their executioner from an attempted poisoning that they're offered a proper set of rooms - and the run of the Ice Warriors' Palace.

Liz is fascinated by trisilicate, turning a stone over and over in her hands and watching the ore catch the light while the Doctor rattles off its molecular mass and chemical properties at relativistic speeds. It's strange to hear him recite dry facts - on Earth, she was always the one left trying to reconcile the sheer reality of the impossible.

Now the magic is in her hands, tangible, and he may as well be reading from a textbook.

They dine with an officer of the Ice Warriors, who apologises for their incarceration with all due deference, and expounds at length about how abhorrent violence has become to their people. The Doctor makes remarks that he obviously thinks clever, and Liz is forced to defuse the situation by spilling her purplish-brown beverage all over his shirt.

When they've finally quelled the colonial urges of the Ice Warriors and regained the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor grumbles something about having to find a Venusian drycleaner and sulks for a week.

In the meantime, she studies the TARDIS manual and the logs and all the books she can lay her hands on. If she maps out this new universe carefully enough, then maybe, just maybe, she'll find somewhere out there where she belongs.

**2\. Munich (1889)**

It's a chilly morning, but Liz is so glad to be back on Earth that she hardly notices the cold. The Doctor gallantly offers her his coat, and, with a saccharine grin, she gallantly offers him hers.

They're standing on a street corner, watching a little boy walk hand-in-hand with a young man. The man is a student, judging by the books under his arm, and seems possessed of a remarkable exuberance as he speaks of rationalism and empiricism. The boy is quiet, nodding thoughtfully, and when he does speak, he whispers the words to himself before he speaks them aloud.

"Do you know who that is, Liz?" the Doctor whispers, and the awe in his voice keeps her from answering, though she has a fairly good guess. "That young man is a medical student named Max Talmud, and the boy he walks with is none other than Albert Einstein."

Liz leans against the trellised wall and smiles, thoughtfully. There is something familiar in the way the boy peers up at the man, all openness and curiosity and wonder.

"Talmud was his mentor," she says softly, remembering the research she'd done for a paper early in her undergraduate career. "He taught him to reason and to question the way things are, to dare to wonder how they could be."

The Doctor smiles down at her. "A wise man," he says, only half-joking.

Liz is still staring after the pair as they stroll into the morning fog. She feels the mood shift, and some part of her shivers and regrets not having accepted the Doctor's coat. "But without Einstein's research, there would never have been the atomic bomb," she murmurs. "He and Szilàrd would never have written that letter to President Roosevelt, and President Truman, in turn, would never have ordered that attack on Japan-"

"Those are might-have-beens, Liz," the Doctor says, and his eyes are far away. "Things don't work that way."

"Everything as it should be," she breathes, and the distant figures disappear into the mist.

"Come on, Liz," says the Doctor, taking her hand and leading her away. "I've got something to show you."

And he does.

**3\. The Vortex (Yesterday)**

It had been a long night, filled with horrible monsters and still more horrible people. Liz had only just managed to isolate the missing piece of the retrovirus genome in time to enable the Doctor to manufacture the antiviral and save the planet.

She should have realised something was wrong when he insisted on bundling her into the TARDIS, rather than waiting around and listening to the colonists sing their praises. "A little gratefulness doesn't go amiss, you know," he was fond of saying. And the Calusarians had the most delicious celebratory banquets she'd ever encountered.

He collapsed the moment he crossed the TARDIS threshold, and it was all she could do to stop herself scolding him when his coat fell away to reveal the gash left by a stray bullet in the earlier struggle against the rebel faction. "Medical wing," he mumbled.

"I had gathered as much," she said coolly, though her hands were shaking, and, when she'd ascertained that he wasn't badly hurt, she heaved a sigh of relief despite herself.

It wasn't until he was recovered and they'd finished laughing over the rebel leader's ill-considered threats - "I'll use your shoes to make my garters!" - that Liz composed herself enough to stare sternly down at him and ask why he hadn't told her he'd been hurt.

"Oh, Liz," he said with a sigh. "I didn't want you to worry about me."

"I don't know if it's escaped your memory," Liz said sharply, "but I do have a rather insignificant little degree in medicine. You wouldn't have lost nearly as much blood if you'd let me take a look earlier. I wouldn't have fussed over you."

He stared up at her, then looked away, and suddenly he reminded her of the little lost boy he'd been, from time to time, back on Earth. "No," he said, with a hint of a smile on his lips. "I don't suppose you would have done."

But when he's wounded by a Marshank Beast in 47th century Belgravia and she bends to examine the wound, he pulls away from her touch.

**4\. Alexandria (255 BC)**

Alexandria is a hot, dirty city, full of deceptively refreshing, humid breezes blowing off the Mediterranean. It's also where the Doctor has to crash-land the TARDIS after a particularly bad ion storm disrupts her temporal sensors - Liz, watching him pull apart the console bit by bit, barely restrains herself from telling him precisely what the TARDIS manual would tell him to do, if he ever bothered reading the thing.

He gets there in the end, though, restores the TARDIS's circuits and sets her back on course with a minimum of collateral damage, then stands back and looks pleased with himself until Liz laughs and congratulates him on the accomplishment.

And then Liz suggests they step outside before taking off, to look around, to explore. The Doctor's smile is contagious, but she finds herself bristling at the pride in his expression. _Look what I've made of you,_ it says. _Look what I've done._

She snatches his hand in hers and together they step through the doors and out into the sticky heat beyond.

"They knew the world was round," the Doctor muses.

"What's that?" Liz smiles nervously at a crowd of young boys, come to examine the bright new box and its strangely-dressed inhabitants.

The Doctor grins at the children, then pulls a face that makes them laugh. "These little fellows," he continues, glancing back at Liz, "know full well what took a more modern civilisation ages to discover."

"That's what religion will do for you," Liz says, watching as one of the smaller boys shyly tugs on the Doctor's cape, admiring the velvet. "You can't go around believing in something - just one thing - without losing sight of all the rest of it."

The little boy pulls at the Doctor's cape, more forcibly this time. "Can I have it?" he asks, the shyness in his voice belying the rude words. His friends crowd around, equally curious.

The Doctor grins, extricating the fabric from tiny, grubby fingers. "Sorry, old chap," he says. "Bit of an anachronism. Dangerous stuff to leave lying around." He meets her eyes over the child's head and smiles. "Liz, we should probably head back to the TARDIS."

"Right, Doctor," she says.

It isn't until they're spinning off through the Vortex that she realises how much she's started to believe in this man, in this impossible being. Liz Shaw has always prided herself on her ability to entertain several hypotheses without leaning too heavily one way or the other - blind faith is anathema to her nature.

She digs through the TARDIS archives for the first time in months, starts studying the universe again. When the Doctor asks what she's looking for, she says: "Research," and doesn't say: "A new home."

**5\. Home (this never happened)**

"I must have set the coordinates in base-twelve notation," the Doctor says with a rueful grin. "A simple mistake to make, surely. Let's take a look around, while we're here."

It's not Earth - but then, she hadn't really expected it to be. When she'd asked the Doctor to take her home, for an instant she'd seen that lost, melancholy look in his eyes, and she'd known it would be an uphill struggle. This is their fourth attempt, and now they're standing on a fluorescent pink outcropping over a village decked out in violent yellow and orange spots.

"Well," she says blandly, "at least the sky's still blue."

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs eloquently.

"Doctor-"

"Why do you want to leave, Liz?" He's not looking at her as he asks the question she'd been expecting the first time, not making eye contact, and she realises that he's trying to make it easier for her, trying to give her a way to explain herself without having to look him in the eye.

She runs a finger along his cheek, and he turns to look at her, startled. "Because I'm not you," she says gently, meeting his eyes. "Because I don't want to be the one who travels with you. Because I don't want to be defined by everything about you."

"You're a brave person, Liz," the Doctor begins.

"No," Liz corrects him, "I'm not. Just my own person." She swallows hard. "And this isn't Earth, but maybe it's where I should be."

His eyes widen. "Liz-"

"I'm a doctor and a scientist. Maybe I can do some good here." She stares down at the brightly-coloured buildings below and winces. "Beginning with a lesson in colour-coordination." He doesn't smile at that, still staring at her, bewildered. "I've learned so much in the past year, Doctor, that I think I could survive anywhere. And there are worse places than this."

He looks away finally. "I'll take you back to Earth," he says with a sigh. "I'll try again. Come on."

It takes him a moment to realise that she's not following, and he turns in the doorway of the TARDIS to see her smiling back at him. "I'm sorry, Doctor," she says, "but I'm done living my life by your terms. Thank you for all you've shown me, all you've taught me, all you've made me-" She sees him start to protest, and holds up a hand. "But I think, right now, I'd like to learn just who Liz Shaw really is. And I think I could do that here."

He leans against the TARDIS door, smiles his little smile, then shakes his head. "Liz Shaw," he says slowly. "You are an amazing person. And I can say this with some certainty, having been at the receiving end of your brilliance on more than one occasion. Don't ever try to change that."

She laughs, then, harder and louder than she should, and listens to the wild whooping echoes around her. "Oh, Doctor," she says with a grin. "It's never been about what you thought of me."

And suddenly his smile is genuine, different, changed. "Goodbye, Liz."

She turns and starts down the mountain, the still-fading echoes of her laughter mingling with the trumpets of the TARDIS's dematerialisation. And then there is silence.

"Hello, Dr. Shaw," she says to the world. "Pleased to meet you."


End file.
